Overview and CQC Inspections

OverallGood

Our inspector's description of this service

Last updated 8 October 2015

We inspected the practice at the location of Crewkerne Health Centre, Middle Path, Crewkerne, Somerset, TA18 8BX, where all registered regulated activities were carried out. This focused inspection was undertaken to follow up a breach of regulation found at our previous comprehensive inspection undertaken on 12 November 2014.

The practice serves approximately 11,250 patients living in a five mile radius around Crewkerne in South Somerset including 1000 patients living within the Dorset area.

The national general practice profile showed the practice has a large demographic of patients over the age of 55 years. This was above the England and Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) average, particularly between the ages of 65 to 69 years old. The practice population is below national and CCG averages for patients under 44 year olds. The practice is in the least deprived range for the area.

There are seven GP partners, five male and two female. Each week the GPs covered 49 sessions which is the equivalent to six and half full time GPs.

The nursing team consisted of a nurse practitioner, who worked four days per week, four female practice nurses who worked the equivalent to approximately three full time nurses. There were also three female health care assistants, equivalent to approximately two full time health care assistants.

The practice has a General Medical Service contract with NHS England. The practice is contracted for a number of enhanced services including extended hours access, facilitating timely diagnosis and support for patients with dementia, minor surgery, patient participation, immunisations and remote care monitoring.

The practice has core opening hours from 8am to 6:30pm to enable patients to contact the practice. Extended hours were provided on Monday evening until 8pm. The practice refers their patients to NHS 111 operated by Vocare, Somerset Doctors Urgent Care for out-of-hours services to deal with urgent needs when the practice is closed.

Specialisms/services

Inspection ratings

We rate most services according to how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led they are, using four levels:

Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Inadequate – the service is performing badly and we've taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.

No rating/under appeal/rating suspended – there are some services which we can’t rate, while some might be under appeal from the provider. Suspended ratings are being reviewed by us and will be published soon.

Ticks and crosses

We don't rate every type of service. For services we haven't rated we use ticks and crosses to show whether we've asked them to take further action or taken enforcement action against them.

There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.